Quotes about Existence
To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle
— Walt Whitman
Enough to live, enough to merely be.
— Walt Whitman
I am the poet of the body and I am the poet of the Soul, The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me
— Walt Whitman
Death and immortality were but two aspects of the same blessed hope to this man, who poured out his life in a turgid fount of ecstatic joy in living:
— Walt Whitman
seems to me that everything in the light and air ought to be happy; Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, let him know he has enough.
— Walt Whitman
When I read the book, the biography famous, And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man's life? And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life? (As if any man really knew aught my life, Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my real life, Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections I seek for my own use to trace out here.)
— Walt Whitman
I thought, He must forebear to reveal His power and glory by presenting Himself as Himself, and must be present only in the ordinary miracle of the existence of His creatures. Those who wish to see Him must see Him in the poor, the hungry, the hurt, the wordless creatures, the groaning and travailing beautiful world.
— Wendell Berry
And I knew that the Spirit that had gone forth to shape the world and make it live was still alive in it. I just had no doubt. I could see that I lived in the created world, and it was still being created. I would be part of it forever. There was no escape. The Spirit that made it was in it, shaping it and reshaping it, sometimes lying at rest, sometimes standing up and shaking itself, like a muddy horse, and letting the pieces fly.
— Wendell Berry
This is the foundation of the distinction between the scientia necessaria and the scientia libera. God knows Himself by the necessity of his nature; but as everything out of Himself depends for its existence or occurrence upon his will, his knowledge of each thing as an actual occurrence is suspended on his will, and in that sense is free. Creation not being necessary, it depended on the will of God whether the universe as an object of knowledge should exist or not.
— Charles Hodge
Wherever men exist, in all ages and in all parts of the world, they have some form of religion. The idea of God is impressed on every human language. And as language is the product and revelation of human consciousness, if all languages have some name for God, it proves that the idea of God, in some from, belongs to every human being.
— Charles Hodge
Child, you listen to me, and you look me straight in the eyes when I'm talking to you. I may be just old hired help, and a country woman to boot, but I'm a human. And you know what? God thought of me. He actually took the time to dream me up. I may not be much to look at, but what you see first started in the mind of God, so don't stand there and ignore me like I don't exist. You remember that." Miss
— Charles Martin
Breakfast, dinner, tea; in extreme cases, breakfast, luncheon, dinner, tea, supper, and a glass of something hot at bedtime. What care we take about feeding the lucky body! Which of us does as much for his mind? And what causes the difference? Is the body so much the more important of the two? By no means: but life depends on the body being fed, whereas we can continue to exist as animals (scarcely as men) though the mind be utterly starved and neglected.
— Lewis Carroll